Antibiotic micelles as a cure for Lyme neuroborreliosis

Western technology has failed. Western society has failed. It has failed to properly diagnose Lyme patients. It has failed to properly treat Lyme patients. And it is still failing us, with no improvement in sight. Our supposedly enlightened world is much less capable and much more corrupt than some people like to believe.

Faced with the institutionalized (because most profitable) incompetence of the Western Medical-Industrial complex, people get increasingly desperate. And desperate people often do desperate things. They see no other choice than to follow harmful Lyme "protocols", buy useless "zappers" and pop expensive "detoxers". To no avail. Everything has been tried already. MMS, Hyperbaric Oxygen, Hydrogen peroxide infusions, the Marshall protocol, Rife machines, salt/vit. C, ICHT, Cholestyramine. Nothing ever works. Not even high doses of the intravenous antibiotic Ceftriaxone, administered for years. Why is that? Are Lymies hypochondriacs? Do they suffer from post-Lyme syndrome, a kind of auto-immunity? We think that it is more likely that we are still ill because the mumbo-jumbo-voodoo nonsense doesn't work, and antibiotics don't fully cure Lyme neuroborreliosis either. Why not?

Antibiotics usually do not fully cure Lyme neuroborreliosis because:

  • Antibiotics need to be able to penetrate the blood-brain barrier (bbb) in order to achieve bacteriostatic (MIC) or bactericidal levels in the CNS. The oral antibiotics able to do that can be counted on the fingers on one hand, and the doses required to attain MIC are already quite toxic to the patient. Bactericidal levels can only be attained when such high doses are used that liver- or kidney failure likely results before the infection has been eradicated, so those dosages are hardly ever prescribed. You would need at least 1 gram/day of Doxycycline for it to be bactericidal. 500 mg/day is often the minimum dose to remain stable in symptoms. 600 mg/day yields very slow improvement, noticeable only by the month. Doctors don't prescribe much higher doses. There just doesn't exist any oral combo that won't kill the patient first before eradicating all spirochetes in the brain.
  • The intravenous antibiotics administered in a hospital do not penetrate the blood-brain barrier. Ceftriaxone for example can only reach the CNS in case of meningitis or encephalopathy. That is why in the initial stages of IV Lyme treatment, the neurological symptoms improve tremendously. But then the inflammation of the cappilary veins that feed the brain abates and their epithelial cells "close ranks" and the bbb is intact again. The patient, while on IV treatment, will remain below encephalopathy but will never be cured. Off IV-treatment, he wil deteriorate to the level of a compromised bbb, and IV abx. will rescue him again, until he stabilizes. Your doctor will disagree when you tell him this. To set him straight, refer him to this:
    Zhonghua Nei Ke Za Zhi. 1989 Jun;28(6):340-2, 381. PMID:2582913.
    [The penetration of cephalosporins across the blood-brain barrier and its clinical significance].
    [Article in Chinese]
    Zhang YY, Wu PJ, Zhang Q.

    "The penetration of Cefuroxime (CXM), Ceftazidime (CTZ), Cefotaxime (CTX), Ceftizoxime (CZX), and Ceftriaxone (CTRX) across the blood-brain barrier was studied in 119 patients with or without meningitis after an intravenous injection of 2 grams. Cephalosporins were undetectable or their concentrations very low in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), when there was no inflammation in the meninges. On the contrary, the mean CSF concentrations of cephalosporins were 2.21-5.36 micrograms/ml and the CSF/serum ratios 3.73-31.80% in acute stage of purulent meningitis."

    So we had to wait for the Chinese to come and show us that not even intravenous antibiotics will work against Lyme disease. All IV antibiotics used to treat Lyme neuroborreliosis are next to useless. And this has been known since at least 1989. But your Infectious disease specialist doesn't know or doesn't care. Hence the "Chronic Lyme can't possibly exist" controversy. It is based on the false assumption that intravenous Ceftriaxone or Claforan can reach the brain parenchyma of a person without meningitis or encephalopathy. They can not.

Apart from the above problems, there are myriads of additional barriers the Bb spirochete erects: They go intracellularly, so the antibiotic also need to attain bactericidal levels inside neurons. Bb encysts itself and can lie dormant, viable for weeks or months, unaffected by antibiotics, until the antibiotics are discontinued and the spirochete emerges from its cyst. Bb has a so-called "efflux pump", with which it removes antibiotic molecules from its protoplasm. It can physically migrate away from high antibiotic concentrations. It can release RNA-blebs that can lie dormant for months, until they form fully-functioning spirochetes again. And Borreliae multiply and grow slowly, being only susceptible to antibiotics when they replicate or synthesise new cell wall.

Still, all those tricks would not be able to stand up against a prolonged antibiotic onslaught. At least, that is what we think. We think we have reason to assume that "Post Lyme Syndrome" is not autoimmune, but infectious in origin. And we think that if we would have a way to put a high concentration of especially Bb-busting antibiotics into neurons, that Lyme may be cured in three to six weeks. Frustratingly, those antibiotics that kill Borreliae the best do not penetrate the bbb at all.

Great minds have tried to solve this problem. Without antibiotics in the brain, the bacteria will multiply unabated, because the CNS is "immune privileged". The fact is, our own T-cells can't penetrate the bbb either. Only antibodies can. They are small enough. But antibodies can only be produced after an immune cell encounters a bacterium. And that is impossible, in the brain. One of the things that would allow the body to keep producing Bb antibodies is a brain shunt which would discharge cerebrospinal fluid into a vein, so that the immune system would continue to encounter Bb antigens. But this is an invasive procedure and good luck trying to get one installed. Another idea is to temporarily open the bbb with certain chemicals. Also this approach hasn't borne much fruit yet. But there is a method that provenly deposist powerful antibiotics straight into neurons. Nearly all antibiotics can be introduced into the CNS that way, including antibiotics that are extremely effective in killing Borrelia burgdorferi s.l., antibiotics that normally can't penetrate the blood-brain barrier. This method uses nanotechnology called Micelles. Just as it is a Chinese team who discovered in 1989 that commonly used intravenous antibiotics do not penetrate the blood-brain barrier and hence have nearly no curative effect on brain infections, in 2009 a Chinese team discovered a way of making any antibiotic pass the bbb. This century will belong to China, and it is time we start paying attention to their inventions.

Micelles can bring any antibiotic into neurons

antibiotic-micelleWe all have learned in school how a detergent works. A detergent is a long molecule. One end "likes" greasy stuff, and the other end likes water. This way, fatty smudges will get billions and billions of these molecules embedded in them, until the attracting force of the water pulling at their other ends dislodges the greasy spot and carries it away as a suspended oil droplet.

Suitable "detergent" molecules can be created by attaching a hydrophilic Polyethylene Glycol molecule to a hydrophobic b-Cholesterol molecule. They can be coated with a cell-penetrating peptide, and via membrane dialysis, the antibiotic molecules are"payloaded" into the micelle. The micelles look like this under a scanning electron microscope: micelle-electronmicroscope

These nanoparticles need to ideally be 120 nm in diameter to penetrate our cells best. The technology to assemble them is awesome. An example of the ingenuity involved is the cell-penetrating peptide used to coat the micelle. This is a peptide used by the HIV virus to infect our cells! It is time that we start respecting Chinese technology.

OwnDoc means "Be your own doctor". Hippocrates is said to have said: "He who is not his own doctor is a fool". Micelle production is serious business. Backscatter detectors and desktop electron microscopes cost very serious money. We are currently investing the profit from our online store into this venture, because it will hopefully benefit Lyme patients as much as it will benefit me, Sarah Vaughter, the owner of the store and the author of the articles on this site. I have decided to take the risk and become the world's first human guineapig for antibiotic micelles in an attempt to cure myself of chronic Lyme disease for which I have been taking oral antibiotics for the past 14 years. We will document our progress on this site. It will take time though. If it cures me, I don't think we will ever be able to make this available to anyone else, but at least we will publish our results and methods so that others can hopefully replicate them.

If chronic Lyme is due to spirochetal activity, which we think it is, antibiotic micelles will likely be able to either cure the patient, or very significantly reduce symptoms. Because this technique really works. The below photo is of micelles inside rat neurons:

micelles-neurons

The micelles were loaded with fluorescent dye to make them visible under a microscope. The arrows point to micelles inside neurons. More neurons in the picture have micelles in them, such as the two left of the top arrow. The antibiotic has not only reached the brain - within hours, when the micelle membrane degrades, it will be released inside the neurons themselves, where Borrelia likes to hide out. It has been known for a long time that Borrelia spirochetes, the bacteria that cause Lyme neuroborreliosis, hide inside neurons. Judith Miklossy shows photographic evidence of this in "Persisting atypical and cystic forms of Borrelia burgdorferi and local inflammation in Lyme neuroborreliosis":

Borrelia-Bb-spirochetes-inside-neuron

Antibiotic micelles may provide a cure for a host of other neurological syndromes of unknown etiology, since there is strong evidence to suggest that at least a large percentage of Alzheimer, ALS and MS are caused by spirochetal bacteria (Lyme and oral Treponema). Scientists agree that polymeric micelles are the future of oral drug delivery. See also here.


1.  Heidi Joe Collins    Wednesday, June 5, 2013

very interesting!. I just wanted to mention that minocycline crosses the bbb & is effective when used in combination (long term) with other antibiotics for Lyme neuroborreliosis.



2.  fern t mimosa    Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Interesting! Can you provide a reference that shows that minocycline does this? I was on it for years without it curing my neuro-Lyme. Perhaps it was a does issue.



3.  celadon    Wednesday, June 5, 2013

There are many articles on medline (unbound) and regular pubmed that show that minocycline crosses the blood brain barrier. Not saying that it is easy to "cure" neuro lyme. Correct dosing is a problem, many doctor will not prescribe a high enough dose.



4.  Heidi Joe Collins    Friday, June 7, 2013

Sure, here is just one I found (there are many on Google search) http://demystifyingmedicine...

Used in combination with other antibiotics that are cell busters (like rifampin for example, there are others) the combination is the key. Dose depends on the patient. You should look into it, it may help as it has many others.



5.  Susan Coleman-Chapman    Tuesday, June 11, 2013

I saw new pcp and LLMD next week. Infected 8-10 yrs/ First time I had hope in a long time. Then my reading above said nothing will kill the bacteria in the brain. Is this true?I just hit a wall. This writer said the meds would probably kill you. Gotta razorblade?



6.  Sarah Vaughter    Tuesday, June 11, 2013

There is a big difference between improving every month and no more bacteria in the brain. The latter is unattainable in my opinion.

Dying of antibiotic treatment is something that only happens with people that are already "condemned to death" such as those with advanced ALS where Lyme is the underlying cause. Clinical trials with antibiotics show increased mortality rate in ALS patients, although ionly wityh very advanced cases, and the amount of abx. used was too little to make a difference - it only caused more damage due to the Jarisch-herxheimer reaction.

So you have nothing to fear, and everything to hope for. Doxycycline and Minocycline are the orals of choice to treat neuroborreliosis - always with reasonable success when dosed properly.

I am working on an article on pulsing those orals. There are optimal ways to pulse and to measure improvement.



7.  Susan    Friday, June 21, 2013

Not sure when this article was posted. Has any time passed, any results/improvements to report? I have a friend with Lyme. Thanks



8.  Sarah Vaughter    Friday, June 21, 2013

The article was posted in the beginning of 2013.

We need to find a way to load more abx into the micelle core. This would require doing a patentable invention, so this is non-trivial.

Since we have insufficient time and money at the moment, we regrettably had to put the project on ice.



9.  DorisSpin    Saturday, July 6, 2013

I've been DX with FMS and Lyme - by different doctors. I
tried the Doxycycline, but it made me vomit violently. I finally kept it
down with toast & pepto-bismol. I've never been treated with Minocycline, so I don't know if it would cause me to vomit. I have been
taking Guaifenesin for many years now for FMS. It has helped my
joint/muscle pain tremendously - but you have to watch that you don't intake
any SALS or the Guai can't do its job, which is very hard to explain. I
never completed the tons of scripts the Lyme doc gave me because it was all too
scary to do on my own. My lyme doc was 8 hours away in Springfield, MO & I live in
IL. I did try the Salt & Vitamin C for a while & felt much better
while on that protocol, but ended up with gallbladder pain & then had to
have it removed. I thought I was having Herx reaction, but turned out to
be a diseased gallbladder, or so I was told by the surgeon. I don't
believe any doctors anymore.



10.  Heidi Heckel-Mclaughlin    Monday, July 29, 2013

I have been a chronic lyme, babs, sufferer for years with continual relapse after seeing every doctor on the planet and in Mayo clinic for a month. They told me I had familial als since this is what my father died of. my story is extensive so I will save the retelling of that recurring nightmare. Finally, I used colloidal silver, dmso as a carrier which is basically a solvent to penetrate in the tendons and joints where the vascular quality is low and I self medicated with ozone... i have been off of the anti-malarials and all antibiotics for 3 years now!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is nothing short of a miracle and before I was so ill I felt I was near death. There is hope!!!!!!!!! Take your health into your own hands with the help of a physician that has lyme because they are more motivated as seekers of the truth..there should be more of them now....(sort of funny), be educated and be wise...Before the treatments i previously mentioned, i would relapse because ticks also carry a NEW retrovirus called XMRV or HGRV.... my virals were high in the band in my labs...everyone was so focused on the lyme they ignored that..it is actually like hiv but slower replicating. it is a jumper from mice...i believe it is similiar to feline leukemia....... it is why my immune system could not not manage it all...I could go on and on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. if you have babesiosis one has to use extreme caution if some doctor is trying to give you anti-virals because most of them suppress red blood cell production so between that and the fact that the babs destroys them it could be a bad scenario. Get a very very good infectious disease doctor. there are usually many bacterium at play here....good luck.and .by the way I love this site!!!!!



11.  Carolyn Hundley    Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Get the people, and the suffers to raise money



12.  RJ    Sunday, April 6, 2014

I sincerely believe I am at the beginning of a very long and hard journey...worse than the cancer I had 19years ago. After being dismissed by my GP as having a tick bite two years ago, I've developed unusual symptoms since...now my eyes sight has changed within the last two (6month) appointments to my eye doctor.....and two years ago with corrective lenses, I could read the second to bottom of the eye chart, and now I can barely read the second to the top line of the same chart. This has my eye doctor puzzled since no other tests he's done proves any known eye disease. This is not why I'm writing to feel sorry for myself. The reason I am writing is to put out an idea I have for better diagnosis out into the community of professionals who appear to have a keen grasp for the seriousness of this situation...and I chose your blog!

For over 35 years I have worked as an analytical chemist mostly using light microscopy, UV/Vis spectroscopy and Infrared detection techniques. I have an undergrad degree in biology (minoring in pathobiology, microbiology and hemotology) and a masters degree in chemistry. During my career, I have used many different consumer industries methods, developed test methods, and resolve issues or problem solved...I cross many avenues of science to research situations in order to come up with viable answers. More recently, I have a growing interest in researching confocal microscopy with fluorescence detection, but since it's a technique primarily used in pathogenic microbiology, it is unfamiliar area for most leadership to invest in as to apply in the areas of my current position.

I felt a need to explain my background in order to continue. Referring back to my current symptoms....I realized since my most recent eye exam, my eye doctor uses a fluorescent dye for further examination of the retinal of my eyes. That night, after the exam, I had another terrible headache as many has happen since the "bite". The next day I was examining some material for work under a light compound microscope, 500 to 1000 magnification range..and noticed I can see more floaters in my eyes that day than I have ever noticed before, this happened as the light reflected back from the lenses into my eyes in the eyepiece. The transparent outlined shape was as like a spirochete. I shifted back and forth from one objective to the next to ensure the floater shapes respectively magnified to the objective used..and they were!

As some saying goes, "the eyes are the windows to the soul", I believe the eyes can be a possible examination window of the developing spirochete. Oh, and I should also mention, I followed up examining my eyes via the compound light microscope and at times have seen granules instead of the spriochete shape when I felt the best, clearer sight, and was a "good" health day....it was only when I felt ill/headache/cloudy/heavy headed (or as I usually had thought it was due to an upcoming migraine or sinus infection) did those "corkscrew-like" shaped outline floaters showed up in the eyepiece reflection again.

My thought is, if the eye doctor can use a fluorescent dye that is already medically approved for their diagnostics, why not use this approach to diagnosis the organism's infection via our eyes...such as for an preliminary indication of an infected nerve pathway/or BBB?? This would require using some higher magnification lense with a laser excitation of the dye drop into the eye as some fluorescent dye, which could be bound with a "micelle" to carry and specifically target the spirochete (which could also possibly lead to alternate more accuracy treatment options with nanotechnology on the rise). I know the pathogenic microbiologists use this technique to visualize the spirochete under a confocal microscope of an infected tissue sample as to demonstrate the presences of the spirochete borrowing it's way so easily into and out of a membrane (I've researched University videos/lectures on line).

The test method I am proposing would be in-vivo and nondestructive to the live host...or alternatively, possibly using the secretions from the host's nasal, tear ducts or small tissue sample (biopsy) within the mucosal membranes and, in those secretions to be analyzed outside of the host body...detection either by confocal fluorescent microscopy or by fluorospectroscopy using a narrow sample pathlength. My request and hope is that some researcher who may read your blog has interest in this area enough to obtain funding as to demonstrate possibly alternate test methods on mice along the lines of my proposed suggestions/ideas..

As an analytical chemist, the current Lymes disease tests are terribly flawed and unacceptable...mostly because of the limited accessibility for the public of the greater accuracy tests as well as the extremely poor accuracy of the more common screening test typically used. If I had developed test methods that needed to be reproducible and accurate as required by industry standards in order to pass a Lean Six Sigma approach, these Lymes tests would have failed miserably! We, the public, need simple, fast, more accurate and sensitive tests for screening this parasitic disease. Is anyone out there willing to attempt my proposed idea for a more improved diagnosis technique to screen for Lymes, PLEASE?!



13.  Steve    Sunday, May 4, 2014

Hi my name is Steve, I have had so many tick bites now as a landscaper i have to do some thing new. I have a rash and allergies now that wont go and foods of all sorts flare it, worse after tick bit. I live on the Sunshine Coast in Quensland Australia, ticks are bad. I am going to try silver and dmso. Any advice i would be grateful for, And just about to order Sarah's Lufenuron for candida. Thanks Steve



14.  Katherine Gabriel    Friday, May 16, 2014

Can you please explain the method you used to administer the DMSO and colloidal silver? I have both at hand and have taken the colloidal silver by mouth but have always used the DMSO topically for injuries. I have heard of it being used by mouth but would hesitate to do so without some input from a knowledgeable person. Thanks so much, looking very hard for answers to treat my Lyme Disease.



15.  Michelle    Tuesday, November 17, 2015

sorry to hear this Sarah... when one has chronic late stage Lyme which we know for certain due to our symptoms has the challenge of the spirochete bacteria in the brain tissue (beyond the bb) - it seems hopeless to be able to eradicate these... sadly - my hope is that I don't develop AZ like my 80 yr old father has as at age 54 - this would seem to be one of the worst outcomes of chronic Lyme... I am on the cowden protocol currently which has seemed to help my sweats, energy levels and sleeplessness, but the chronic joint pain, eyesight deterioriating, facial palsy tics, brain fog (particuarly short term memory) - is really frustrating... thanks for trying to do your best to help others in this regard...



16.  fred    Friday, April 15, 2016

micelles are complicated. Why not use liposomes? it would be very cheap to do this, you just get some lipo material and add doxy to it. they sell it online



17.  Sarah Vaughter    Friday, April 15, 2016

Because it wouldn't work.



18.  fred    Monday, April 18, 2016

wouldnt work in which respect ? making a doxcycline liposome or lipo doxy wouldnt get into the brain ?



19.  Sarah Vaughter    Monday, April 18, 2016

Yes ;-)



20.  fred    Monday, April 18, 2016

which one ? you can have lipo doxy made, not hard to do. It has been shown to cross the brain. Not sure what the issue is



21.  Sarah Vaughter    Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Doxy all by itself crosses the bbb perfectly fine too.. With Micelles, you can ingest the antibiotic orally. Liposomes digest in the stomach. Micelles are able to survive the GI tract, are water-soluble and bring a substance that normally does not cross the bbb into the brain.



22.  fred    Wednesday, April 27, 2016

I have years of experience with lisposomes and the secret is that only some get digested, the rest pass through to the gut. This variability is enough for big pharma to say they wont work and use them, but they mean wont work in terms of absorption predictability standards for big pharma, but that doesnt mean they wont work at all. So for other applications it is fine, there are supplement companies that use them for things like liposomeal glutathione and lipo b-12 that are oral and without a doubt work great. So dont write them off enitrely just because some get digested. For this application of doxy and lyme, any amount would be useful, you should try it, you can get a base of oral liposome product like vitamin c and just mix the doxy in, it would work fine. You should just experiment with it and see what happens, I think you have enough experience to know if the doxy works better or not using this method, you have nothing to lose.



23.  Sarah Vaughter    Wednesday, April 27, 2016

It may be interesting for antibiotics that do not penetrate the bbb. Doxy does.



24.  Nick gabriel    Sunday, October 9, 2016

Please look i to crowd funding, like indiegogo or gofundme. I will spread and share it.



25.  John    Monday, November 14, 2016

Sarah

My son has been diagnosed with neuroBb. He presented with slow processing out of nowhere at 13 years old.

Anyway, your nano discussion is incredible and I have a friend that raised capital for a nano company in fla that has this technology. He describes the technology as world changing. Would really like to get an update on how your trial is progressing.

Thanks!!!



26.  Sarah Vaughter    Monday, November 14, 2016

We are very slowly progressing with a totally different, similarly high-tech approach that is more in line with our capabilities. If it ever will see the light of day, it will be headline news, it's that "crazy". But we're spending time and money in our lab, building the prototype components we need. There is very slow progress but we're years away from even testing on bacterial cultures, mainly due to time/complexity constraints.



27.  Phil    Thursday, May 17, 2018

Is there an update on this \"high-tech approach\" you have mentioned?


28.  Sarah Vaughter    Thursday, May 17, 2018

Yes. We have built ultra-high-power capacitor banks and a high voltage charger and will build a triggered spark gap and a coil, to expose bacteria-inoculated milk cultures to multi-Tesla AC magnetic fields, since the patent literature as well as recent Chinese studies show that this fully sterilizes bacteria, also in salty solutions with a permeability comparable to that of human tissue and the brain.

We know from Electromagnetic Cranial Stimulation that this would result in unconsciousness and epileptic fits, but likely not to permanent brain damage or cancer. It has been tested with no ill long-term effects by Maxwell Labs on rats.

Without endoflagella, Bb s.l. becomes harmless and we hope that the proton-driven flagellar motor can be \"sabotaged\" by the applied magnetic AC pulse in the double-digit T range. It will still take many, many years before this could be upscaled to a human-head sized device, not to mention FDA approval etc.

We\'ve put this project on low pri because there are indications that a lot of the chronic sx are autoimmune-related but we\'re not sure. The problem is cost and complexity. Treating 1.5 ml Eppendorfer vials costs 10,000 dollars in prototype costs, experimenting with mice would cost a multiple of that, and self-treating ourselves would cost up to a million and may very well turn us into vegetables...



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